The future of American film lies on television.

I'm not usually attracted to big-budget American films.

I wanted to make Canadian films, and I ended up making American films.

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

There is no realism in American films. No realism, but something much better, great truth.

The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone.

I wouldn't mind being in an American film for a laugh, but I certainly don't want to be in Thingy Blah Blah 3, if you know what I mean.

I graduated from the American Film Institute in 2010, where I studied as a director, and came out with a few features I really wanted to make.

The first time I did a big American film, I was surprised by all the different financiers who came to the set and told the director what to do.

'The Road' was my first American film, my first film in the snow. The first of everything. So, I was jumping into it, and that was pretty grueling.

The business is so international now; you'll be working on an American film, and you'll start chatting to someone, and it's like: 'Oh, you're English, too.'

When I first met David Lynch, he was living in the stables of the American Film Institute... He'd work all night and have his crew lock him in during the day, and he'd sleep.

American film isn't just film and glamor and fame and the lives of people who are fortunate financially. Those aren't the only stories in this vast nation. That's my mandate.

I was a child in the '60s and a teenager in the '70s, which was the golden age of film as far as I'm concerned, between American film and the Italian reinvention of genre film.

I just think Australia tends to make very good movies, so if someone hands me an Australian or an American film script I would guess the Australian film would be more intriguing.

For the most part, the American film market has become very corporatised, even independent film to a degree, and because of the corporate management mentality, they want to take the safe way.

When I say that I am going to do an American film, I didn't want to suddenly go off into a completely different world that which bears no relation to the style of filmmaking that I'm used to.

The dean of the American Film Institute has written that I'm one of the very few auteurs in America. I've had freedom for 40 years to create art that is totally personal and is what I believe in.

When I'm making an American film, it's more safe because there are so many people on the set to watch me. Whatever I do, they say, 'What are you doing!? Tell me first!' There are so many restrictions.

Well, if you're talking about the current climate, there's a lack of content in American film because I think people are deeply confused about their emotions, and they don't regret certain aspects of their own foreign policy.

John loved celebrity. We attended an American Film Institute dinner honoring James Cagney, and the room was filled with famous actors like Mae West, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne and Steve McQueen. John was like a kid in a candy store.

In our culture the way women have been represented in American film had a pretty big impact on my self-esteem and I'm sure it did on a lot of other girls. I think they have a greater psychological impact that anybody's willing to talk about.

In the last ten years of watching films I have found that some of the foreign films I saw affected me most. One American film that stands out for me for its workmanship and artistry is 'Ratatouille.' It was an astonishing effort in filmmaking.

'Night Watch' itself is a very Russian movie. It's impossible to imagine this kind of movie somewhere else: a movie with a depressing ending, a lot of inexplicable storylines, strange characters. It's a Russian reflection of American film culture.

I wrote and finished the script for 'Man in the Middle' two weeks after the September 11 bombing. It's a very American film about an ex-diplomat based in the Middle East, a leader in the U.S. administration who now sells used cars in the Middle East.

I'm just interested in all of the different ways that a woman can be. We don't have enough, when it comes to American film, that shows all of the different complexities and ways that a woman is interesting and mysterious and dynamic and really complicated.

The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn't work and you're going to hit a brick wall at some point.

I started watching so many different types of women, saw all the complexities of them, all the ways and the look and shapes they could be, and I felt it was missing for me in American film. I didn't see anybody I was watching in movies that felt like me. I felt rather tortured and lonely about it.

I have to write three books a year to make a reasonable living out of writing - unless, of course, she gets a major American film deal. Phryne has been optioned since the very first book, but to make a historical TV movie, it costs $30,000 a day extra for the historical detail to be correct, so most people aren't doing it.

I always feel that crime films are about capitalism because it is a genre where it is perfectly acceptable for all the characters to be motivated by the desire for money. In some ways, the crime film is the most honest American film because it portrays Americans as I experience a lot of them, in Hollywood, as being very concerned with money.

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